I was crossing the bay with an empty mug when the speaker cut through the morning, and my body was moving before the words finished forming. Mug on the counter. Gloves in my back pocket. Halsey was already at the wheel. Micah grabbed the jump bag off the wall mount. Lou came through the office door with his radio.
Dispatch had it as a maternity emergency. Pregnant female, active labor, pulled over on the shoulder of Route 9 southbound, half a mile past the bypass exit. Conscious, alone in the vehicle, a sedan, contractions two minutes apart.
Hank came through from the office, radio already up. He pointed at the rig. We loaded.
The siren opened up as Halsey took us out of the bay. The sound stripped everything else away. No coffee, no conversation, no four-minute bypass route.
I pulled the OB kit from the compartment behind my seat and checked it on my knees. Sterile gloves. Clamps. Sterile scissors. Bulb syringe. Towels. Thermal blanket. I knew this kit. I knew the procedure, knew the timeline, knew what a delivery needed from the person running it. Every OB call I'd worked had been in a house or an apartment with a partner on scene and a hospital close.
A shoulder delivery on Route 9 was different. No partner on scene. Patient alone in the car. Contractions at two minutes meant we were close, and close meant I was going to be the only hands in the room when the room was a sedan on the side of a highway.
Halsey took the bypass. The lights cleared the intersections ahead of us. Lou was on the radio with dispatch—confirming the mile marker, vehicle description, and that the patient was still conscious. His voice was flat and even. Halsey's hands were steady on the wheel.
"Four minutes," Halsey said.
I closed the OB kit, checked my gloves, and looked out the windshield at the bypass straightening ahead of us. The trees along Route 9 were full and green, and the sky above them was the high, bright white of an afternoon that hadn't decided whether to cloud over.
We took the exit. Halsey brought the rig down to speed on the merge. Route 9 opened up southbound, two lanes, light traffic.
I saw the hazards from a hundred yards out.
A sedan on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing, pulled over at an angle that meant the stop had been fast, and the driver hadn't had time to straighten out. The car was silver. Small. The driver's door was closed. I could see a figure through the rear window, hunched in the back seat, moving.
Halsey pulled the rig onto the shoulder behind the sedan. I was out of the cab before the engine settled, OB kit in hand, walking up the driver's side.
The walk was short. Twenty feet of gravel shoulder between the rig and the sedan, the air warm against my face, the sound of Route 9 traffic passing in the far lane. My boots crunched on the shoulder. The hazard lights clicked in their rhythm. I registered the car as I came up on it—silver sedan, late model, a Hartsdale General parking sticker on the rear bumper.
I didn't process the sticker. I was already in the procedure. Patient in the back seat, contractions at two minutes, alone, scared. I was going to open the door, introduce myself, get vitals, assess dilation if she'd let me, and keep her calm until the ambulance unit arrived or until the baby decided it wasn't waiting.
I reached the rear door and looked through the window.
She looked up at me.
Gray eyes, wide with pain. Hair pulled back. A face I knew better than I'd any right to know it. She was gripping the headrest of the front seat with one hand, the other pressed flat against her belly, and her mouth was open on a breath that wasn’t a scream but was about to become one.
Audrey.
CHAPTER 8
Duke
She looked up at me through the window, and my body knew before my brain did.
The face I carried out of a wedding months ago and never put down. For one second, the entire call stopped being a call and became the most specific thing that had ever happened to me.
Then training took over. Because it had to. Whatever I was feeling about the fact that the woman was Audrey Callahan was going to have to wait in line behind the procedure that was about to save her life.
I opened the door.
"Audrey. It's Duke. I'm here. We're going to get you out of this car."
Her eyes locked on mine. I watched her register who I was, watched the recognition land and get shoved aside by the contraction that was climbing her body. She nodded once, sharp, through her teeth.
I turned to Hank. He was three steps behind me, already reading the scene. His eyes went from Audrey's face to mine and stayed there for a beat.
Run it. I've got you.
He turned to the perimeter. I heard him on the radio behind me, his voice flat and steady, coordinating with the medic crew, getting Halsey to pull the engine forward to shield the shoulder from traffic. Lou was already setting up the barrier. Micah was running the OB kit from the rig to the back of the medic unit, where the doors were open, and the stretcher was down.
